It’s actually the Blaze “10-games-in-one” Megadrive system. But it’s new! I bought it from a real shop! Yesterday! Just like when Sega used to have consoles stocked in shops!

So… is it any good?

The box looks authentic, like a real Sega product. This is EXCITING!

The console itself is very, very light. The controllers are tacky and the d-pads are sharp enough to cause serious injury if carelessly hurled during a heated gaming session. You can however plug in regular Megadrive controllers. There is also a cartridge slot for your Megadrive games. The whole thing runs through 2 composite leads, one for video and one for audio.

…and this is the game selection screen. Fatal Labyrinth appears to have been elided into one word. The colour’s a bit washed out, but it IS on a 42″ TV.

And this is an actual game running from the console. Verdict? The colours are a bit washed out, and the sound is tinny but it’s less of an arse than trying to get your old Megadrive running on an LCD TV with a decent picture. It’s a bit finicky about some Megadrive games, but it’s played most of the ones I’ve tried. Overall? It’s a cheap bit of fun, and if your old console is totally knackered you could do worse than give it a punt.

Oh, I thought you’d got one of the wireless ones (currently about 30 quid in TKMaxx)
No doubt that one’s got even worse controllers though (and requires batteries) Probably just as flimsy too.

No going to comment on Christmas decorations as we haven’t even put any up down this way yet (Something to do with me packing away the box of c64 stuff and putting it in the loft again before we get the Christmas decorations down)
Nice use of ‘elided’ though.

The *’s at the end make me think something’s been censored – What’s the score in percent?

These do not run on original hardware but rather a 68k CPU (I think) which emulates the ROMs. Connoisseurs loathe them because of this and the different sound they produce but I’ve never seen one in action to tell the difference, not that I would easily spot ‘em anyway. I’d like to add that I do like the shape and taint of your hand, it expresses vim, vigor and vitality.

hate to ask a serious question ‘and all’ but what type of output does it use? – I see yellow and white so I’m guessin its the component (or is it called composite) – anyway I mean the red white and yellow one – is it SCART ended? if it had RGB SCART id get one right away :p

I saw a review of one of these on youtube and the sound is noticeably different/inferior to the already odd Mega Drive sound chip. Not that the MD always sounded bad, far from it, just had a tendency to sound crunchy.

Even in isolation, I would say the sound out of these things is bad, screechy. £30 seems a bit expensive too, but then I waited for Arkham Asylum to reach £5 on Steam before taking 3 days to psyche myself up for parting with the money. It’s great by the way, easily worth £5, maybe even 6.

I shall take this opportunity to come clean and admit that I never owned a Mega Drive or Master System. :o My instinctual attraction to unpopularity and failure meant I only joined Sega on the way down with the Saturn. This console generation has been very difficult as there are no clear losers for me form another dead end relationship with.

As has been said already, it’s hardware emulation so yeah the sound is a bit shrill and tinny. But it’s also only coming out of one audio channel which doesn’t help either. Overall I do like it though. Although this is largely because I can’t be arsed to get a real Megadrive running on a modern telly.

@raytrace – The outputs are just white and yellow composite cables. There is no red. This is probably one reason the sound is a bit off.

(1) It’s the Blaze edition so they give us the rippling biceps of Alex Stone on the box. Then they put Sonic The Hedgehog next to the promise of ten games then hit you with Sonic Spinball once you get it all set up. This certainly get points for accurately recreating the disappointment of owning a Sega console.

(2) As for the review – Needs more triple exclamation marks to convey excitement. And where’s the score for playability?